RIYADH: The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice recently arrested a man who blackmailed a woman into paying him a total of SR800,000 over a period of 14 years, press reports said yesterday.

The man, who forced the woman to give him her wages and college allowances while she was studying, took advantage of her by pretending to be interested in marrying her 14 years ago and asking for her photograph, which he used to blackmail her.

The man threatened to show the picture to her family and claim they had been involved in an illicit relationship, even though they had never met.

At the beginning, the man would ask for her college allowances when she was studying. He then asked her for a video of herself saying if she complied he would stop bothering her. The woman initially hesitated, but finally agreed.

However, once he acquired the video, the man persisted in his blackmailing, preventing her from even marrying.

In addition, the man made the woman hand him her ATM card. In order to meet his demands for money, the woman would at times borrow from her friends and even sell her jewelry, said a commission member.

Finally, exasperated at being blackmailed for 14 years, the woman plucked up the courage to file a complaint with the commission’s office in the Al-Rabwa district of Riyadh.

The commission, led by Abdullah Al-Shathry, the general manager of its office in Riyadh, investigated the case and set up a plan to arrest the man red-handed.

The commission asked the woman to telephone the man and tell him that she wanted to meet him to personally hand over the money. The man was arrested at a rendezvous by plainclothes commission members.